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Brett Gelbord is an accomplished business attorney seated in Dykema’s Labor & Employment Group focused on providing practical and efficient guidance to employers on all manner of workforce-related issues. Brett has represented clients in a variety of industries, with a particular focus on the cannabis, automotive, and technology sectors.

On March 7, 2023, a federal court in Pennsylvania issued a ruling denying a cannabis company’s motion to dismiss claims based on the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (the “FLSA”). The opinion in DeMarco et al. v. FarmaceuticalRC, LLC et al., W.D. Pa. Case No. 2022cv-1164, covers familiar ground in the realm of FLSA misclassification cases, and explains why the plaintiffs—who work as drivers ferrying defendants’ cannabis products along their supply chain—sufficiently pled their claims. Specifically, the court applied the six-factor test for determining whether a given worker is an employee or an independent contractor and found that plaintiffs had sufficiently alleged the existence of an employer-employee relationship.

Continue Reading Cannabis Employee Misclassification Case Moves Forward in Federal Court